Since the beginning of commerce, vendors have devised ways of containing and protecting their wares for transportation by the purchaser following a sale. The vendor normally desires that the packaging be inexpensive and disposable. Various wrappings such as paper or newsprint have generally given way to the ubiquitous brown paper bag, now often provided in many colors with some type of handle, and often decorated with the vendor's trademarks and advertising. More recently, many stores selling hard goods have provided plastic shopping bags to consolidate purchases.
Designing take-out containers for the restaurant industry has presented special problems, because many of the individual produict containers must be supported in an upright orientation during transportation. For example, drink cups are subject to spilling their contents, as are open-top french fry bags and boxes. While a flat-bottomed paper bag may provide some support, cups are very subject to tilting and leaking, and a few french fries invariably find their way to the bottom of the paper bag, even from flat-bottomed french fry boxes. Plastic shopping bags provide no means for keeping such containers upright.
U.S. Pat. No. 948,524 shows an attempt to provide stability for ice cream cones by providing a cardboard cone holder that is inserted into a paper bag. This device has the disadvantage of requiring two separate packaging products, the holder and the bag, and the resulting expense of manufacture and extra handling required to fit the products together.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,011,179 shows a candy container according to which a tube of cellulose sheeting reinforced by a tube of mesh is wrapped around a flat, rigid base and tucked into a central opening in the base. The base can also include an outer tray into which the inner base fits, trapping the bag material. The bunched material passing up through the inner base would interrupt the smooth inner surface of the base and make it difficult to place items such as drink cups. Furthermore, the construction shown requires many parts and the container apparently would not be nestable to reduce storage space prior to use.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,556,321 shows a liner for a box, the liner being a conventional bag having a collar attached to its exterior to facilitate opening of the bag and insertion into the bottom portion of the box. The operation of the collar would make it impossible to taper the walls of the bag to allow nesting of bags when opened. Also, the device of this patent does not provide a bag having a rigid bottom. In the configuration providing a rigid bottom, that is, with the liner inserted into the box bottom, the container is not intended to be lifted by holding the top portion of the liner, because the box would fall off the liner.
Thus, there has been a need for a flexible bag that has a rigid, smooth inner bottom for receiving upstanding articles, has the capability of being nested in an open configuration for storage, and can be made from a minimum of materials.